Bakery catch-22: Consumers prioritize freshness, but also want to slash food waste

30 Jul 2019 --- Key trends in the bakery sector include exotic flavors, an emphasis on health and a shift towards crafted foods. Additionally, naturalness and freshness are increasingly important to consumers, although the pursuit of freshness often leads to unnecessary food waste in the sector, despite consumers wishing to slash wastage rates. FoodIngredientsFirst speaks to experts in the field who highlight the dichotomous nature of delivering fresh bakery produce to consumers, while keeping an eye firmly fixed on sustainability.

“People are increasingly looking for products without E-numbers and are searching for clean label alternatives,” says Henrik de Vries, Commercial Director at Kröner-Stärke.

As well as clean label offerings, consumers are also prioritizing health, adds Philippe Arnauts, Group Communication Manager at Puratos. “Around 72 percent of consumers worldwide expect producers to remove or reduce some ingredients, such as sugar or fat, to create healthier products. However, it is not only about removing ingredients, as 66 percent of consumers also mention that it’s about adding ingredients such as proteins and fibers.” 

Gluten-free is still a major trend, although some consumers are unsure about consuming gluten-free wheat products. This is in line with Innova Market Insights data, which reports a 13 percent CAGR in food and beverage launches with a clean label claim (Global, 2013-2017). Products with this type of positioning accounted for 29 percent of global new food & beverage launches in 2017. The term “clean label,” has fully entered industry parlance, and food and beverage manufacturers around the world are innovating in new clean label solutions across the industry. 

Building on the trend for naturalness, de Vries notes that his customers are interested in using starches and flours to extend product freshness naturally. Freshness in general is key, with Arnauts adding that it defines a consumer’s perception of quality. Aroma, baking time, a short shelf-life, appearance and crunchiness all play a crucial role in this. 

The gluten-free trend is also still ongoing, notes de Vries, and is featuring in numerous products on the market. As a result, Kröner-Stärke aims to develop gluten-free products that have a comparable taste to traditional wheat offerings. It has created wheat-based but gluten-free starch, but de Vries notes that this type of product can be risky as some customers are uninterested in using any wheat, even if it is gluten-free. 

Taste is top, but so is a “human touch”
Arnauts also notes that Puratos’ Taste Tomorrow survey of 17,000 consumers in 40 countries shows that taste is still a top priority, but that consumer desires are evolving. 

“Consumers want to be wowed by all their senses. A feast beyond the eye is essential to create a sensorial delight. Consumers also consider texture to be an essential component within their taste experience of today, and their taste preferences evolve too. In the past, we saw that consumers mainly liked traditional tastes. Today, consumers in general and Millennials in particular also like to try out new and more exotic tastes from other parts of the world.”

This is in line with Innova Market Insights’ number one trend of 2019, “The Adventurous Consumer.” Innova Market Insights consumer research (2018) indicates that seven in ten US consumers “love to discover new flavors,” with similar numbers of respondents reported in China and the UK. The market researcher also finds that 28 percent of US, UK and Chinese consumers have experienced a shift in their tastes towards more exotic or adventurous flavors in snacks. This market dynamic has contributed to a 35 percent growth in the use of a “discovery” claim in 2017 from 2016. These types of products feature claims that include the use of words such as “discover,” “explore,” “uncover,” “unveil” and “unravel.”Most consumers are willing to pay more for handmade goods.

Other trends found in Puratos’ Taste Tomorrow survey are craft, ethical lifestyle and transparency. Consumers are looking for food made with a human touch, with 77 percent willing to pay more for it. Consumers also wish to act more conscientiously, so they look to make ethical food choices and consider the impact of the production, distribution and preparation of food on people and the environment.

Despite this, de Vries notes that in Germany, privately-owned bakeries are facing intensive competition with supermarkets. “From a cost perspective, the small-scale baker has no chance to be competitive here. We think that the only chance to be competitive in the long-run is to offer a different product portfolio with a higher-quality appearance. In addition, the focus on organic or gluten-free could be an interesting option to compete with supermarkets.”

“Sixty-two percent of consumers agree with ‘I am what I eat, I pick my food carefully.’ In this process, consumers seek greater transparency and increasingly consult packaging labels to have a more informed choice of consumption; 95 percent in the APAC region versus 88 percent in Northern America,” notes Arnauts. 

Other key bakery trends were ultimate convenience and personalized experiences. Consumers want to be amazed and surprised, so they expect to be offered an eating experience that goes beyond the food. This is confirmed by 77 percent of consumers worldwide who agree that the experience around food matters, says Arnauts. 

“Digital solutions are becoming essential in the baked goods industry. At the same time, consumers don’t want offline shops to disappear (confirmed by 70 percent). It’s all about combining the best of both worlds. Consumers express openness to innovations; 62 percent would welcome automatically scanned shopping trolleys, 50 percent would like a digital assistant to help them make better-informed decisions in the store, and 42 percent would like the support of artificial intelligence to get smart product recommendations.” 

“Consumers are not only looking for greater choice to fit their personal preferences, but they also want it to be hyper-personal, tailored to their needs and desires,” he explains.

Food waste
Another key trend noted is sustainability, with consumers increasingly trying to avoid food waste. 

“For consumers today, responsible eating goes beyond personal benefit. It is about sustainably-produced products. Fifty-six percent of consumers around the globe look for sustainably-produced products that respect the environment. Fifty-five percent absolutely wants to limit plastic packaging, 49 percent say animal welfare is a priority when buying food and 40 percent already buys locally produced food on a weekly basis. These concerns all impact consumers’ food choices,” says Arnauts.

Consumers are using apps like Olio to reduce food waste, but their quest for freshness is also driving wastage.De Vries agrees that reducing food waste is very important to their customers. As a result, the company is currently developing a product which could be used as a glue to reduce the loss of seeds within the supply chain of breads and buns. The target is to develop a product which is cost-effective, declaration-friendly, and that helps customers to reduce the loss of seeds and to present an optimized product to the end customer.

Bakery is especially susceptible to food waste as they generally have to sell fresh every day, suffering more wastage than most other food categories at a store level, explains a spokesperson for Olio, an app that uses food-sharing to reduce waste. 

As well as baked goods’ short product life, ubiquity, low cost, and consumer demand for freshness also drive waste in the category, according to Jen Glyn, Press and PR Manager of FareShare, a UK-based hunger and food waste charity. 

Additionally, wastage can occur at any stage, although sometimes the product can be reworked. However, not all production waste is necessarily edible, Glyn notes. “There is also an element of human error with mistakes such as those on packaging, but a large proportion of mistakes is caused by a mismatch between supply and demand in the backdrop of tight turnaround times from production to market,” she adds. 

The Olio spokesperson notes that as consumer awareness of the problem of food waste is rapidly rising, the food industry must respond. Furthermore, less waste and greater efficiency should mean lower costs, which, in turn, should lead to lower retail prices – albeit raw material costs are also a significant factor. There is also the well documented positive environmental impact from fewer resources, such as power and labor, being employed in the overall production process, Glyn concludes. 

By Katherine Durrell